Philip Zea, President, Historic Deerfield

Philip Zea became of President of Historic Deerfield, Inc., in 2003. He worked as Vice President for Museums and Collections at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England) in Boston between 2001 and 2003 and prior to that as Curator of Furniture at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Williamsburg, Virginia, beginning in 1999. He was employed previously by Historic Deerfield for eighteen years, concluding as Deputy Director and Chief Curator. Phil has also been a staff member of the New Hampshire Historical Society and a consultant to many museums on the topics of early furniture, clocks, and historical interpretation. A New Hampshire native, Zea holds degrees from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, and the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture at the University of Delaware. Phil is the 2009 recipient of the Award of Merit from the Antiques Dealers’ Association of America (ADA). He has lectured and written widely. Publications include Clock Making in New England, 1725-1825: An Interpretation of the Old Sturbridge Village Collection; The Dunlap Cabinetmakers: A Tradition in Craftsmanship; “Useful Improvements, Innumerable Temptations”: Pursuing Refinement in Rural New England, 1750-1850. His latest book with Jean M. Burks, Rich and Tasty: Vermont Furniture to 1850 won Historic New England’s 2016 Honor Book Award.

Barbara A. Mathews, Ph.D., Director

Barbara Mathews’ enthusiasm for history and museums defines her role as Director of the Summer Fellowship Program. She is Historic Deerfield’s Public Historian and director of academic programs, and teaches a course in material culture at Smith College. She did her undergraduate work at Wesleyan University and holds a Ph.D. in history from Brown University. Before coming to Historic Deerfield, she worked at Old Sturbridge Village, the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association. Her research interests include the American Revolution and the Founding, the early National Period, Shays’ Rebellion, and African and Native American presence and experience in 18th century rural New England. Barbara has many years of experience in writing history content for the web and has collaborated on several award-winning history websites, including Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704 and From Revolution to Constitution: Shays’ Rebellion and the Making of a Nation.

David Bosse

David Bosse is Librarian of Historic Deerfield and the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, and curator of maps at Historic Deerfield. He formerly served as curator of maps at the Clements Library of the University of Michigan, and assistant map curator at the Newberry Library, Chicago. His research on the early American map trade has appeared in Mapping Boston (MIT Press, 1999), the journal Cartographica, and in the online journal, Coordinates. He has a particular interest in account books and what they can tell us about the individuals who kept them and the community they lived in.

Eric Gradoia

Eric Gradoia is the Director of Historic Preservation at Historic Deerfield. Prior to joining Historic Deerfield, Eric held positions at the Albany, New York firm Mesick Cohen Wilson Baker Architects and with the Massachusetts Historical Commission. He has served as an adjunct faculty member at Roger Williams University, School of Architecture, Art and Historic Preservation, and the Boston Architectural Center teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in architectural conservation, traditional building practices, and American architectural history. He holds his BA in Architectural Conservation from Roger Williams University and his MA in Historic Preservation from the University of Vermont. Eric sits on the Board of Historic Eastfield Foundation and is a registered assessor with the American Institute of Conservation Collections Assessment Program. Eric’s primary fields of study include 17th, 18th, and 19th century New England vernacular architecture, traditional materials and construction methods, and the technology and evolution of American domestic conveniences.

Amanda Lange

Amanda Lange is the Curatorial Department Director and Curator of Historic Interiors at Historic Deerfield. She received her undergraduate degree in Art and Art History from Rice University in Houston, Texas, and her master’s degree from the University of Delaware/ Winterthur Program in Early American Culture. After graduation, she joined the curatorial staff of the Winterthur Museum as Assistant Curator of Ceramics and Glass. At Historic Deerfield she was part of a team that developed the Flynt Center of Early New England Life, a 27,000 square-foot facility for exhibitions, visible storage, and object work areas. She was responsible for opening the Museum's Attic, a study gallery filled with over 3,000 decorative arts objects. Ms. Lange has developed several exhibitions and accompanying catalogues including Eye for Excellence: Masterworks from Winterthur, Delicate Deception: Delftware at Historic Deerfield, 1600-1800, and The Canton Connection: Art and Commerce of the China Trade, 1784-1860. Ms. Lange is also a contributing author to the publication, Global Trade and Visual Arts in Federal New England (University of New England Press, 2014). Currently Ms. Lange is working on a catalogue of Historic Deerfield's British ceramics collection. She is a board member of the American Ceramic Circle, Chair of the American Ceramic Circle Membership committee, a member of the Ceramics Study Club of Boston, and a member of the Colonial Chocolate Society, a scholarly group of museum professionals, academics, and historians supported by Mars, Incorporated.

Anne Digan Lanning

Anne Digan Lanning is Senior Vice President of Historic Deerfield, Inc. She oversees the departments that comprise the museum division – Curatorial, Museum Education and Interpretation, Academic Programs, Library, and Special Event Planning. She has worked at Historic Deerfield since 1986 and during this time has also held the positions of Vice President for Museum Affairs, Curator for Interpretation and Chair of the Curatorial Department. Ms. Lanning’s research interests focus on women’s history topics from the colonial period to the colonial revival, historic foodways, taverns, and the history of technology. She developed two of the museum’s signature interpretative programs - open hearth cooking demonstrations and classes and the historic trades demonstration series – as a way to engage and teach visitors about life and work in pre-industrial New England. She is currently researching the Barnard Tavern, the museum’s latest restoration project, to get a clearer picture of how this public house functioned during the early National Period and the young family who operated it. She has lectured and published on a variety of topics. In 2010, Ms. Lanning led Historic Deerfield through a successful reaccreditation review by the American Alliance of Museums. Historic Deerfield is one of 43 accredited museums in Massachusetts. She received an undergraduate degree in history from the College of New Rochelle (NY), and a master’s degree in History Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program (NY). Prior to joining the staff at Historic Deerfield, she worked as Director of the Patterson Homestead and Director of Education at the Montgomery County Historical Society, Dayton, Ohio.

David E. (Ned) Lazaro

David E. (Ned) Lazaro is the Curator of Textiles at Historic Deerfield. He holds a master’s degree in fashion and textile history from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he focused on 18th- and early 19th- century clothing construction. He has lectured and published on various aspects of western fashion and appearance through the lens of New England inhabitants, including 17th- and 18th- century Indian cotton, 18th-century drawloom-woven silks, 19th-century hoop skirts, and 20th-century dressmaking. Ned has curated exhibitions at the Flynt Center of Early New England Life focusing on the intersection of fashion and the military, the reuse of clothing and textiles, and nature motifs in the decorative arts.

Penny Leveritt

Penelope (Penny) Leveritt has been in the museum field since 1988 as a Preparator, Associate Curator, Photographer and Visual Resources Manager. Before coming to Historic Deerfield in 1997 she worked at the Moody Mansion Museum in Galveston, Texas doing photography, exhibition installation and curating small exhibitions. Penny takes most of the photographs for Historic Deerfield projects and publications such as the Annual Report, the HD website, the Historic Deerfield Magazine and exhibition catalogs such as Chinese Export Art at Historic Deerfield. In addition Penny manages the Rights, Reproductions and Licensing of Historic Deerfield's Image Catalog, administers the Visual Resources Archive and assists other departments in creating and obtaining images for their projects. Penny has a B.A. in Fine Art from Austin College in Sherman, Texas.

Christine Ritok

Christine Ritok is an Associate Curator at Historic Deerfield. She holds a BA in history and art history from Kalamazoo College, and an MA from the Parsons School of Design/Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Institution in the History of Decorative Arts & Design. Before joining Historic Deerfield's staff in 2015 she was Associate Curator for Sculpture & Decorative Arts at the Museum of the City of New York, held curatorial positions at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and the Detroit Institute of Arts, and was a part-time faculty member of Parsons School of Design. Her research interests include 18th and 19th-century American furniture craftsmanship, ornament, and upholstery, European and American sculpture and decorative arts, and the history of collecting. As a curator, her main project is cataloguing Historic Deerfield’s permanent collection of furniture, incorporating recent scholarship and close object study. Working on the first catalogue of the museum’s furniture collection since 1976, her first volume will be devoted to Classical furniture from the collection of George A. Cluett.